A culture of dialogue: vision, pedagogy and dialogic skills for the RE classroom

The Catholic Church has recently issued a call for “educating to fraternal humanism” that envisions a pluralist society in which all voices are to be heard. This contrasts with previously held positions of outright rejection of pluralist society (Augustinian Thomism) or Christianisation (Whig Thomism). This paper advances a Dominican Thomist vision of a post-secular society comprising three realms, namely sacred, secular and profane. Dominican Thomism is founded upon human reasoning whereby Catholic and liberal thinkers collaborate to build this society with a fortified secular realm that is a buffer against the other two realms. In such a secular realm the public sphere is pluralist and open to all voices. A socially productive pedagogy is the starting point and this paper points to a dialogic RE intervention in the classroom that offers much promise.